April 2009: Editor's Note

Extending the (cross country) season

For those of us who were introduced to cross country in a U.S. high school, it is a fall sport, stretching from the last hot days of summer to early winter snows. Thus, it may feel anachronistic to feature cross country in an issue you hold in your hands in March.

The better the runner you are, however, the longer and later the cross season becomes. For high school runners talented enough to qualify for national championships, the season stretches into December, four to six weeks after most state championships. Collegiate championships are held just before Thanksgiving, and for professionals, cross country starts with European meets in December and January, moves on to national championships in February and culminates at world cross in late March. On the international level, cross country is truly a winter sport – so much so that the IAAF has tried more than once to get it added to the Winter Olympics program.

This year, we decided to celebrate cross country in a late-winter issue. We could have focused on Boston, or previewed the upcoming prep and collegiate spring track prospects. What to cover when is one of the challenges of the industry, one that continues to change rapidly. When Running Times was founded 32 years ago, we served primarily as a calendar and results magazine. Even a decade ago, many runners first learned of race results in our pages. Today, waiting for a print magazine to read results is absurd; anyone who gives a hoot will have read them on the Internet four to six weeks earlier. This reality shapes our strategy, which increasingly includes the Web. In fact, we've added Scott Douglas to our Web team this year to enhance our coverage and provide more continuity between our print and Web content.

Our coverage of the 2008 high school cross country championships serves as a good example of this synergy. Back in the first weeks of December, we presented brief real-time results of the Nike and Foot Locker championships via Twitter, then posted results, stories and photos on runningtimes.com within hours after the events. In this issue, we present more in-depth stories about a few of the unique individuals at Foot Locker, a photo essay on one team and its experience at Nike Nationals, and our cover photo of the Nike girls champion, Chelsey Sveinsson, still just a sophomore with major potential. On the web now, you'll find expanded coverage, such as an interview with Sveinsson, a podcast with Fort Collins coach Chris Suppes, and more photos.

Having decided on when and how to cover an event, we have to choose who to cover. The choice to follow the Fort Collins girls team at Nike Cross Nationals was somewhat arbitrary, as are most choices. We had covered the favorites, Fayetteville-Manlius, in our October 2008 issue, and I was looking for a "typical" team experience, which could have been any of the 22 qualifying teams. I gravitated toward Fort Collins, Colo., because they appeared to be a classic cross country championship team–a cohesive group that works together to produce excellence.

Cross country may be the world's most team-dependent sport. Granted, each individual doesn't rely on others for the quality of her or his performance, like a basketball guard needing a forward to catch his brilliant passes. But, in other team sports, a star player can carry a team by dominating the play. In cross country, however, every team member's finishing place counts; to win, every runner needs to run well. Thus, the best cross teams often aren't dominated by a star out front, but are comprised of a tight group of runners in the pack who pull each other along, leaving no one behind to add a slew of points and ruin the team score. I discovered that the Fort Collins girls were indeed such a team, a remarkable group of young women who encourage each other both on the cross country course and in the classroom (they boast an average GPA just shy of 4.0), as well as having a lot of fun. I enjoyed getting to know them, their coach, and the story of their season.

The Fort Collins girls inspire me, as do the performances of marathoners like Sammy Wanjiru and Haile Gebrselassie, who top our 2008 World Marathoners of the Year rankings. When I'm inspired, I want practical information to make me a better runner. You'll find plenty of that in this issue, from specific training plans of runners like marathoner Rita Jeptoo to the latest research on balancing workouts and rest for maximum benefits. This is our aim in all our coverage, in print or online: to feed your passion for the sport with news, analysis, great writing and great art, then provide advanced tools to apply that passion. Let us know how we're doing.